Johnny Winger could only shake his head at the maneuver. They’d wargamed tactical escapes from all kinds of capture maneuvers but nothing like this. It didn’t even seem possible.
***I can’t explain it, Boss…the bug just up and imploded…no ‘bot should be able to fold like that…but the thing’s hardly there anyway, it’s so light…***
“Ten to one that was the master replicant, ANAD,” he said. Programmed to evade capture anyway it could, or commit atomic suicide if it couldn’t. He couldn’t help but wonder if he wasn’t jousting with an unseen human controller somewhere nearby.
The pressure of the swarm now seemed to increase, a suffocating, smothering blanket crushing the very air out of the chamber. Chekwarthy was gasping for air in the distant corner he had crawled to, while Sheehan was shielding D’Nunzio even as he tended to her lacerations and bruises. M’Bela was struggling to get the TinyTown pod ready, swatting off mechs like so many angry flies.
They weren’t going to be able to survive this much longer, not without help.
The skirmish continued for another two minutes, but Winger could tell the ANADs were steadily losing the battle.
***I can’t keep up…they rep too fast…there’s just too many of them, Boss--***
Group by group, the ANADs were steadily and surely overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Winger began to notice increasing resistance to movement again, a clear indication the enemy mechs had re-established themselves inside the chamber, after tussling with ANAD. Soon, the high-freq whine became audible again.
“Dana, we can’t hold them back!”
Dana Tallant was ten feet away and helping M’Bela struggle with the TinyTown pod. “---got… to get… help, Johnny—“she forced out. She lay on her side in a fetal position, virtually helpless, still fingering her own wristpad, trying to organize some kind of defense, a shield, anything.
Winger could see the situation was getting hopeless. ANAD couldn’t keep up. “Just mindless replication. Like a Big Bang, right here in containment—“
Tallant agreed, choking on her own words as she ingested mechs down her throat. “They’re going to smother us, if they don’t eat us first—“ She was tapping keys on her wristpad without effect. “I’m not linked to ANAD…what’s happened—“
Winger tried his own wristpad, then swore. “I may have lost him—“ ANAD…Base to ANAD…are you still there…Base to ANAD, respond—“ Even over the coupler link, nothing—“I was trying to snag a master…thought I had him but he slipped out…damndest thing I ever saw—“
What had happened to the ANAD master? Had one of the mechs surprised him, snapped bonds, maybe penetrated the core and blown the tiny assembler to bits?
Tallant finally gave up on her wristpad and concentrated on standing up.
Winger helped her get upright. “This is no good—“ ANAD, please come in…are you still there, buddy? ANAD, this is Base—but there was nothing, on his wristpad or the quantum coupler. Only static— “Dana, I can’t hack fast enough to counter-attack. ANAD said these mechs were unbelievable…just shells with a few effectors barely stuck on. Somebody’s really juiced up the rep rate.”
“We’ve got to get out of here…we can’t fight these buggers now—“
But if the containment chamber were opened, the whole base would be at risk, maybe all of Singapore.
“Maybe DPS can give us some breathing room.” Winger slogged across the room, stumbling over writhing bodies, slogged through spongy mist a few paces to the bulkhead, and made the call over the crewnet, hoping the signal would get out through the thick hull of the chamber.
DPS1 Sheila Reaves was outside containment, a quarter mile away, troubleshooting a balky coilgun in the ordnance bunker at Ops, when a faint call came through on her headset. It was Captain Winger.
“DPS here—“ she muttered absent-mindedly, then froze as she realized what had been happening. Winger related the eruption of infested nanobots from the body of the Red Hammer agent they’d fished from the Pacific the day before. We’re trapped, Sheila…ANAD’s out of commission and the buggers are stuck in overdrive…it’s a big bang right here inside containment…get the HERF gun spooled up…maybe you can stun ‘em enough to let us get the hell out—
She was on her way in a dead run before Winger could even finish the sentence.
“Already online, Captain!” Reaves’s strained voice came from somewhere halfway between Ops and Containment, as she hustled the weapon outside and across the quadrangle. Tropical breezes wafted salt air and fragrant blossoms into her face as she raced across the ground. “I’m coming as fast as I can—“ she switched channels and called the other Defense and Protective Systems Tech., Chandra Singh. “Taj…Taj, are you there…get your ass over to Containment, pronto! Wake up and get moving…Captain’s in deep kimche and needs the HERF gun…something’s happened in the chamber—“
Singh’s voice was slurred, thick with sleep…he’d been bunking in the Barracks after pulling an all-nighter the evening before.
“Keep your pants on, will ya? I’m on my way—“
“Hurry…I don’t know what’s happened but it’s bad—“ For good measure, Reaves had already alerted Security and the duty officer at Ops. Singapore base would be soon locked down tighter than a drumhead. Even the local People’s Militia had been notified.
She dragged the High Energy Radio Frequency weapon up the steps and into the Containment building, eventually grabbing several more techs as she wound her way through several locks to the inner chamber. Outside the heavy plating of the hull, she stood up the HERF gun and, moments later, DPS2 Singh showed up, quickly helping her mount and enable the weapon with smooth, sure motions born of many hours’ practice.
Reaves’ got on the crewnet. She could hear a faint keening whine from inside the chamber. That’s not good, she told herself.
“Captain…Taj and I are just outside the lockout door. What’s going on in there?”
Winger’s voice was faint, strained, a tinge of desperation in the tone. “Reaves, fire short bursts of RF! Dial it all the way up! See if you can clear us a bubble or a zone around the lockout! I’m not sure we can make it otherwise!”
“Through the walls, sir? You won’t get much of a pulse…but it’ll probably fry the lock circuit—“
“Do it! Turn the sucker up full and fire, dammit! And make it quick…we’ve got civilians in here and some are infested…we’re being smothered and ANAD’s gone—“
Reaves looked at Singh, who shrugged. “Okay, sir….stand clear…we’re priming now—“
She dialed in the power setting, and boresighted the weapon flush against the hull plate of the containment chamber.
“Either this works--,” she muttered…
“…or we’ll all be fried,” Singh finished the thought.
Seconds later, the drone of the HERF pulse gun blasted through the chamber walls. Inside containment, Johnny Winger had pushed Dana Tallant to the floor, covering her body with his. A thick breeze of momentarily stunned nanomechs clattered against Winger’s head and shoulders. When the second pulse shook the chamber, and he felt the thermal of high-frequency RF wash over them, Winger willed himself into motion, half carrying, half-dragging Dana Tallant.
With one hand, he cycled the lockout doors and pulled mightily, swinging the inner door open with a strong whoosh of air as pressure equalized. Behind him, General Chekwarthy and Major Sheehan were hustling Doc Frost up and across the room. M’Bela and Deeno were right behind them.
They had only a few seconds to get the outer door open and escape, before the swarm regained strength and slammed them again. They had to get out before the swarm breached the lockout and escaped into the nighttime air over Singapore base.
The outer door swung open and cool air flooded into the lockout. Reaves, Singh and a flurry of hands reached in and pulled Winger and Tallant out to safety.
Winger stumbled to the floor,
with Dana Tallant landing on top of him..
“Hit ‘em again, Sheila! Slam ‘em to hell and back!”
Another drone-snap of radio energy and another wave of heat washed over them. Winger scrambled to his feet and dragged Tallant with him, kicking and pummeling blindly, pulling her up and out of the lockout. Behind them, Chekwarthy, Sheehan and a bruised, dazed Doc Frost limped out.
Reaves and Singh slammed the outer door shut and cycled the lock.
“Another pulse, DPS! Max power…leave it on and let it burn out! We’ve got to crush this swarm for good!”
The two DPS techs, Reaves and Singh, cranked up the HERF gun they had erected outside the chamber and let it pulse at maximum power. Rolling thunderclaps shook the entire structure and the rest of the team stumbled as they clawed their way out of the Containment building into the warm, fragrant night air. The pulse gun soon did the trick…momentarily flooding every cubic inch of the chamber with high energy radio waves. It was shock therapy for a nanomech swarm in mindless exponential overdrive, replicating and disassembling matter at blinding speeds.
Winger helped Tallant and the rest of them across the grassy sward toward the brightly lit façade of the Ops building. What had happened to ANAD? He wasn’t responding to anything, not to acoustic links, not to the quantum coupler link. The tiny assembler had disappeared completely. Winger was sick with worry as he sheparded the bedraggled crew into Ops…behind them, the containment building shook with more HERF blasts.
Fry the buggers, he told himself. Burn the place down. He was angry, more at himself, for losing ANAD…and nearly half the Detachment as well. Whatever had infested Skinner was dangerous and hard to detect.
They’d have to saturate the containment chamber with RF and electron beams for hours, just to make sure the bastards were gone, Skinner be damned.
After they had stumbled into the lobby of the Ops building and collapsed into the arms of help, Johnny Winger went among the groaning crew…Doc Frost, General Chekwarthy, Deeno, Reaves, Tallant, Major Sheehan…to see about injuries. Deeno was the worst…her face was badly bruised and she had severe skin lacerations around her neck and shoulders. She was lucky the mechs hadn’t penetrated deeper. All the same, the medics now circulating would do a thorough check on all of them. With a swarm like this, you couldn’t be too careful.
Winger went back outside, yanked off his hypersuit helmet and gulped in tons and tons of warm, salty night-time Singapore air.
It was better than ice cream on a hot summer day.
Across the quadrangle, the HERF guns had finally stopped. The silence was deafening. Now that the buffeting and the sonic pulses and the high keening wail of nanomech hell had died off, he began to relax. From somewhere far off in the distant port, a ship’s horn bleeted.
That’s when the quantum coupler link burped, startling him, and ANAD suddenly turned up, hovering in an invisible cloud over the grass a hundred yards away.
***Hey, Boss…is that you?***
The post-mortem on the incident came the next day. Inside the Ops command center, Major Kraft was vidlinked in from Table Top. General Chekwarthy was none the worse for wear, though Doc Frost had a few nanoderm patches working on his face, knitting skin tissue back together from the swarm attack.
“It was an ANAD clone,” Frost was saying, as he clicked through some imager views of captured mechs and pieces of mechs. “You can see that from the basic architecture…same platform design, same effector geometry.”
“Resident inside Skinner?” Kraft’s face was a picture of disbelief. “To what purpose? We’ve just recently let Winger here host a master assembler in a containment capsule. You’re telling me this guy was infested with the buggers?”
“He was,” Frost insisted. “And to answer your question as to purpose, we have to ask the subject himself.” Frost pressed a few buttons and one of the displays lit up with a short video of Skinner sitting up in bed, answering a few questions. “Had a short chat with this gent a few hours ago…as you can see, he’s pretty beat up. The fall off that cliff didn’t help his looks…but the nanoderm will put that right over time.” Frost finagled with the imagery, found what he was looking for and ran it.
“We call ‘em haloes,” Skinner was saying, in a low voice. He winced involuntarily, shuddering as if he were about to be smacked in the face. But nothing happened.
Frost’s voice was soothing. “It’s all right. We’ve got the swarm under control. Mostly, you’re clear…and the residual mechs are being hunted down now.”
Skinner wrapped his arms around his shoulders, as if he were cold. “To join Red Hammer, you have to be altered, you have to let them do it.”
Frost was studying some kind of chart on the video. “And it works in your limbic system, the ventral tegmentum?”
Skinner nodded glumly. “Basically, yes…”
The video went on for a few minutes, Skinner sipping some kind of liquid as Frost asked questions and examined him.
Doc Frost summarized the results for the briefing. “My interview corroborates the memory tracing done yesterday…done prior to the attack. Skinner calls these mechs his ‘halo’…in effect, they’re relatively simple ANAD clones, but souped up, as Johnny would say. They’re optimized to replicate fast so they can swarm and build up mass in a hurry. Masterful engineering, I might add.”
“That explains why ANAD was swamped,” Winger said. He patted his left shoulder, feeling through his uniform the lip of the capsule. ANAD wasn’t there—he knew that. The little assembler was in containment being checked out and having new effectors regenerated. It was routine PM after a major engagement. Still, Johnny was comforted knowing his buddy was in good hands. “He couldn’t keep up—“
“Not with this kind of device,” Frost agreed.
Chekwarthy brusquely cut off the chatter. “What about the intel? You’ve got memory traces now, corroborated with verbals. So Skinner’s from Red Hammer…what can he give us? What does he know about the atmospheric swarms that keep tripping BioShield?”
Frost shrugged. “He was a swarm control tech on an island in the Pacific…we’ve triangulated to somewhere in the Marquesas chain, from where he was picked up. He wanted out, but he couldn’t beat the halo. But he knew something about how they worked…he told me about it this morning. The halo ‘bots aren’t effective when the brain is near death…there are chemical reactions, molecules, that damage them, when the brain’s about to shut down. So he worked up a plan to bring himself as close to death as he could, then injected himself with another mech-- a respirocyte he called it—that would make oxygen and keep him alive underwater. That’s where the Corps found him two days ago…floating seventy–two miles from the nearest land, an island called Kurabantu. So far, General, everything has checked out.”
Kraft spoke up through the vidlink. “What about the Amazon swarms? What are they doing…is it Red Hammer behind the attacks?”
Doc Frost took a deep breath. “The evidence, so far as I can determine from the traces, and my talk with him, is vague. Understand, Major, there are still residual halo ‘bots inside his head. He may not be able to talk much more…these ‘bots could easily kill a man in minutes…just by tissue damage alone.”
Chekwarthy was dubious. “Just how much of this tracing can we believe, Doctor Frost? How reliable is this technique? I’ve got two Detachments of nano-troopers ready to go and I need intelligence I can act on…where the enemy is, in what strength, what defenses.”
Frost was thoughtful. “Ah, General, now you’ve found the basic conundrum here. It’s true that ANAD can sniff out trails of high glutamate concentration and we can reconstruct what laid down those trails. It’s also just as true that assemblers like these halo ‘bots can just as easily lay down trails of glutamate molecules themselves, without any underlying stimulus having caused them.”
Chekwarthy’s eyes widened. “Are you saying these…bugs, ha
lo ‘bots, whatever you call them…can trick ANAD? That these trails of molecules might not be real?”
“An unfortunate fact, but true,” Frost admitted. “Oh, the trails themselves are real enough. But what caused them…. At this point, I’m not prepared to offer an opinion as to how factual these memory traces really are…not until I’ve had a chance to study the ‘bots more closely.”
“Then you’re saying we can’t trust what Skinner tells us,” Winger said. “Or even what ANAD has detected.”
“Couldn’t we probe again, more deeply this time?” Kraft asked from Table Top.
Frost shook his head. “Sadly, I wouldn’t advise it. As I said, there are still residual halo ‘bots inside the man. Any more efforts to probe will be resisted, I’m sure…we’ve barely got him stabilized as it is. We could wind up killing him.”
Chekwarthy got up and slammed a fist on the console. “This is completely unacceptable! We have an intelligence source of the first rank and we still don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. For all you know, Doctor, every trace ANAD did could be artificial.”
“A distinct possibility,” Frost admitted, chewing on his lower lip.
Kraft cut in. “General if I may…”
Chekwarthy was shaking his head. “Go ahead, Major—“
Kraft shuffled through some notes, his face momentarily disappearing from the screen. He quickly came back. “Quantum Corps and 1st Nano have a mandate from UNIFORCE to investigate these atmospheric changes. Good source or not, we don’t have much choice, General. We have to act on the intelligence we have.”
Chekwarthy considered that. He knew Kraft was right…the battalion commander had a first-rate reputation in the Corps as a strategist and leader. “I know that, Major…I’m aware of that. It’s just that I don’t like sending detachments into ambushes. For all we know, this Skinner fellow could be a plant, a disinformation source. Look at it: he shows up suddenly in the middle of the ocean with just enough information to send us sniffing to the ends of the earth. Now Frost tells me we can’t necessarily believe a thing he’s said, that even his memories might be cooked.”
Johnny Winger and the Amazon Vector Page 10